ON THE PRICE OF LABOUR. 509 



the enforced abduction of artisans, is found inconvenient to 

 those who have already hired the labour. The artisans thus 

 impressed received travelling money at the rate of a halfpenny 

 per mile in coming to the work and returning to their homes ; 

 and in Elizabeth's time were boarded, lodged, and occasionally 

 provided with sheets. The boarding is contracted for quarterly, 

 as is also the lodging, and the former represents, no doubt 

 accurately, the cost of finding food for an able-bodied man, 

 whose allowance of victuals was abundant 1 . These prices, 

 fluctuating from quarter to quarter, are valuable indications at 

 once of the market value of provisions, and of the charges to 

 which a labourer would be put in procuring adequate subsist- 

 ence. They thus enable us to see how wholly insufficient the 

 customary rates of wages had become for the comfortable sub- 

 sistence of the labourer. I shall advert to them below. 



The accounts during the reign of Henry VIII are for 1532-3, 



1 533-4. J 534-5> !53 6 -7> 1539-40, 1540-1, 1541-2, 1542-3. 

 During that of Elizabeth they are for 1561-2, 1562-3, 1567-8, 

 1568-9, 1569-70, 1570-1, 1571-2. 



The account for 1532-3 is exceedingly interesting, not merely 

 as a record of the prices of labour, but because it gives so much 

 information about the coronation of the Queen (Anne Boleyn), 

 and the ambiguity of that personage's position in the early part 

 of the year 1533. The honest controller Needham is puzzled 

 as to how to describe her. In one page she is the queen, in 

 another she is the marchioness. The accounts also contain 

 much information as to the costs incurred for housing the 

 infant, afterwards the great queen, Elizabeth, and later on, as 

 to the preparations made for the coming of that other child, 

 with which Anne miscarried, perhaps through jealousy or dread. 



The various artisans are superintended by some principal 

 personage called warden or master, who is paid at a somewhat 



1 There is still extant in the Bodleian Library a manuscript book, once the office 

 copy kept in the Admiralty, and traditionally reported to have been the property of 

 James Duke of York, in which prices of labour, rates for distance, and values of many 

 stores are recorded. 



